1 Esdras 1

1 And Josiah kept the Passover in Jerusalem to his Lord, and slaughtered the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month, [a] 2 having set the priests in their daily divisions, dressed in their robes, in the temple of the Lord. 3 And he told the Levites, the temple servants of Israel, to make themselves holy to the Lord, for the setting of the holy ark of the Lord in the house that Solomon son of David the king had built. “It is not for you to carry it on your shoulders. [c] 4 And now serve the Lord your God and care for his nation Israel, and make yourselves ready by your fathers’ houses and your tribes, according to the writing of David king of Israel and according to the magnificence of Solomon his son. 5 And stand in the temple by the division of your fathers’ houses, you Levites who stand before your brothers the children of Israel, in order — 6 slaughter the Passover lamb, and make the sacrifices ready for your brothers, and keep the Passover according to the decree of the Lord that was given to Moses.”

7 And Josiah made a gift to the people who were found there: thirty thousand lambs and kids, and three thousand calves. These were given out of the king’s own goods, as he had promised, to the people and to the priests and to the Levites. 8 And Hilkiah and Zechariah and Esyelus, the officers in charge of the temple, gave the priests for the Passover two thousand six hundred sheep and three hundred calves. 9 And Jeconiah and Shemaiah and Nethanel his brother, and Hashabiah and Ochielus and Joram, commanders of thousands, gave the Levites for the Passover five thousand sheep and seven hundred calves. [d]

10 And this is how it was done. The priests and the Levites took their places in fitting order, 11 holding the bread without yeast, by the tribes, 12 and by the divisions of the fathers’ houses, in front of the people, to bring the offering to the Lord according to what is written in the book of Moses; and so they did in the morning. 13 And they roasted the Passover lamb with fire, as is proper, and they boiled the sacrifices in bronze pots and caldrons with a pleasing smell, and carried them to all the people. 14 After that they made ready for themselves and for the priests their brothers, the sons of Aaron — for the priests were offering up the fat until late in the night — and the Levites made ready for themselves and for the priests their brothers, the sons of Aaron.

15 And the singers of the psalms, the sons of Asaph, were at their post, according to what had been arranged by David and by Asaph and Zechariah and Eddinus, the king’s men. And the gatekeepers were at every gate; no one was to leave his own daily division, for their brothers the Levites made ready for them. [e] 16 And everything belonging to the sacrifice of the Lord was completed on that day: the Passover was kept and the sacrifices were offered on the altar of the Lord, according to the command of King Josiah.

17 And the children of Israel who were found there at that time kept the Passover and the Feast of Bread Without Yeast for seven days. 18 And no Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the times of Samuel the prophet; 19 and none of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as Josiah kept, with the priests and the Levites and the Jews and all Israel who were found living in Jerusalem. 20 In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah this Passover was kept.

21 And the works of Josiah were upright before his Lord, with a heart full of devoutness. 22 And the things concerning him were written down in earlier times — about those who had sinned and acted in ungodliness against the Lord beyond every nation and kingdom, and how they grieved him deeply — and the words of the Lord rose up against Israel.

23 After all this doing of Josiah’s, it happened that Pharaoh king of Egypt came to stir up war at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah went out to meet him. [f] 24 And the king of Egypt sent word to him, saying, “What have I to do with you, king of Judah? 25 It is not against you that I have been sent out by the Lord God; my war is on the Euphrates. And now the Lord is with me — the Lord is with me, hurrying me on. Stand aside, and do not set yourself against the Lord.”

26 But Josiah did not turn himself back to his chariot; he set about fighting him, and paid no attention to the words of Jeremiah the prophet from the mouth of the Lord. † 27 Instead he joined battle with him in the plain of Mageddaous, and the leaders came down against King Josiah. [g] 28 And the king said to his servants, “Take me away from the fighting, for I am very weak.” And at once his servants took him away out of the battle line, 29 and he got up into his second chariot; and when he had been brought back to Jerusalem he ended his life, and he was buried in his father’s tomb.

30 And in all Judah they mourned for Josiah, and Jeremiah the prophet sang a lament over Josiah, and the leading men with the women have lamented him to this day; and it was given out that this should be done always throughout the whole nation of Israel. 31 These things are written in the book of the histories of the kings of Judah; and every single act of Josiah’s doing, and his glory, and his understanding in the law of the Lord, both what he did before and what is told now, is recorded in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.

32 And the men of the nation took Jeconiah son of Josiah and made him king in place of Josiah his father, when he was twenty-three years old. [h] 33 And he reigned in Judah and Jerusalem three months. And the king of Egypt removed him from reigning in Jerusalem, [i] 34 and laid a fine on the nation of seven thousand five hundred pounds of silver and seventy-five pounds of gold. [j] 35 And the king of Egypt made Jehoiakim his brother king of Judah and Jerusalem. 36 And Jehoiakim bound the nobles, and he seized Zarios his brother and brought him up out of Egypt. [k]

37 Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king of Judah and Jerusalem, and he did what was evil before the Lord. 38 Against him Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and bound him with a bronze chain and took him away to Babylon. 39 And Nebuchadnezzar took some of the holy vessels of the Lord, and carried them off, and set them down in his own temple in Babylon. 40 But the things told of him, and of his uncleanness and his ungodliness, are written in the book of the times of the kings.

41 And Jehoiakim his son reigned in his place; when he was made king he was eighteen years old, [l] 42 and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem, and he did what was evil before the Lord. 43 And after a year Nebuchadnezzar sent and had him brought to Babylon, together with the holy vessels of the Lord, 44 and made Zedekiah king of Judah and Jerusalem — Zedekiah being twenty-one years old; and he reigned eleven years.

45 And he did what was evil before the Lord, and paid no regard to the words spoken by Jeremiah the prophet from the mouth of the Lord. 46 And after King Nebuchadnezzar had put him under oath in the name of the Lord, he broke his oath and revolted; and he made his neck and his heart hard, and he went against the laws of the Lord, the God of Israel. 47 The leaders of the people and of the priests did many ungodly and lawless things too, beyond all the uncleannesses of all the nations, and they defiled the temple of the Lord that had been made holy in Jerusalem.

48 And the God of their fathers sent by his messenger to call them back, because he spared them and his dwelling place. [m] 49 But they sneered at his messengers, and on the day the Lord spoke they were laughing at his prophets, until in his anger against his nation for their ungodly deeds he gave the word for the kings of the Chaldeans to be brought up against them. 50 These killed their young men with the sword all around their holy temple, and spared neither young man nor young woman, neither old man nor child; but he handed all of them over into their hands.

51 And they took up all the holy vessels of the Lord, the great and the small, and the chests of the Lord, and the royal storehouses, and carried them away to Babylon. [n] 52 And they burned the house of the Lord, and pulled down the walls of Jerusalem, and burned its towers with fire, 53 and they finished the work of making all its glorious things worthless; and those who were left he carried off with the sword to Babylon. 54 And they were servants to him and to his sons until the Persians reigned, to fill out the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah: † 55 until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths, all the time of its desolation it shall keep sabbath, to the filling up of seventy years.